...Don't get me wrong, I'm all for high-speed rail, it's just that in the
U.S., in every single instance the promoters have been lying scum.
Every single time.

At one time the cost estimates had ballooned to $100 billion before huge chunks of the approved project were jettisoned, leaving just a $35 billion cost overrun.

From Bloomberg:

California's high-speed rail project increasingly looks like an
expensive social science experiment to test just how long interest
groups can keep money flowing to a doomed endeavor before elected
officials finally decide to cancel it. What combination of
sweet-sounding scenarios, streamlined mockups, ever-changing and
mind-numbing technical detail, and audacious spin will keep the dream
alive?

Sold to the public in 2008 as a visionary plan to whisk
riders along at 220 miles an hour, making the trip from San Francisco to
Los Angeles in a little over two and a half hours, the project promised
to attract most of the necessary billions from private investors, to
operate without ongoing subsidies and to charge fares low enough to make
it competitive with cheap flights. With those assurances, 53.7 percent
of voters said yes
to a $9.95 billion bond referendum to get the project started. But the
assurances were at best wishful thinking, at worst an elaborate con.

The
total construction cost estimate has now more than doubled to $68
billion from the original $33 billion, despite trims in the routes
planned. The first, easiest-to-build, segment of the system -- the “train to nowhere” through a relatively empty stretch of the Central Valley -- is running at least four years behind schedule and still hasn’t acquired all the needed land. Predicted ticket prices to travel from LA to the Bay have shot from $50 to more than $80.
State funding is running short. Last month’s cap-and-trade auction for
greenhouse gases, expected to provide $150 million for the train, yielded a mere $2.5 million. And no investors are lining up to fill the $43 billion construction-budget gap.

Now, courtesy of Los Angeles Times reporter Ralph Vartabedian, comes yet another damning revelation:
When the Spanish construction company Ferrovial submitted its winning
bid for a 22-mile segment, the proposal included a clear and
inconvenient warning: “More than likely, the California high speed rail
will require large government subsidies for years to come.” Ferrovial
reviewed 111 similar systems around the world and found only three that
cover their operating costs.
This research should surprise no one who pays attention. Even advocates acknowledge that almost all high-speed rail systems need ongoing subsidies.

But
the California High-Speed Rail Authority steadfastly maintains that its
trains will be the exception: “HIGH-SPEED RAIL IN CALIFORNIA WILL NOT
REQUIRE OPERATING SUBSIDIES,” a 2013 fact sheet
declared, in all caps. The authority has to keep up the charade or
admit to breaking the promises that persuaded voters to back the project
in the first place....MORE